


Utzi niri ez

by akathecentimetre



Category: The Musketeers (2014)
Genre: ETA, F/M, Gen, weird AUs
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-01-17
Updated: 2015-04-09
Packaged: 2018-03-07 22:46:43
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 3
Words: 6,557
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3186050
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/akathecentimetre/pseuds/akathecentimetre
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>d'Artagnan's gotten into some trouble in his life, but he's pretty sure kidnapping a French soldier and falling in love with his commando's wife take the cake. Rating for language and some violence.</p><p>Part 1: In which the kidnapped soldier has a name, and it is Athos.<br/>Part 2: In which d'Artagnan understands the other paths his life could have taken.<br/>Part 3: In which there are rescues, of many different kinds.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> HAPPY HAPPY BIRTHDAY to m’colleague JakartaInn! I have no idea what this fic even is, but she professed an interest in an AU idea where prisoner!Athos bonds with d’Artagnan, and lo, along came a modern AU which is set in Spain and revolves around fictional actions attributed to the very real Euskadi Ta Askatasuna (ETA), the militant Basque separatist organization. Full disclaimer: I am not Spanish, nor do I have any dog in a fight which, since 1968, has taken hundreds if not a couple of thousand civilian and military lives (both ETA and the Francoist government are seriously unpleasant things to read and write about, and the post-Franco government hardly covered it in glory when dealing with ETA either). I also apologize an advance for any errors in my Basque and/or Spanish. The title is meant to be the Basque translation of “Leave me not.” Apart from the trappings, let’s just say that this is an experiment in d’Art-Athos friendship and a new twist on them meeting, or something. At any rate, I hope you enjoy it!

*

Zuba = head committee of ETA  
Taldes/commandos = cells of 3-5 members, coordinated by cupula militar  
Zulo = small hiding space, often underground, or a safe house  
Legales/legalak = secret members who lead safe, legal lives  
Liberados = those who are openly members and known to police  
Apoyos = support staff/members  
Quemados = ‘burnt-out’ former members who have been imprisoned or are under surveillance; historically some were murdered by ETA as insurance  
Kale borroka = street warfare against transportation, buildings, property; rioting; mostly done by members of ETA youth organizations  
Batasuna = Basque political party which did not condemn violence, outlawed by Spanish Supreme Court; denies being political arm of ETA itself ; succeeded by party Aukera Gutziak, which was also banned  
Sortu = Basque party formed in 2011 which is explicitly anti-violence but was still banned  
GAL = Spanish anti-terrorist paramilitary group, held a turf war against ETA in 70s and 80s, scandalously supported by Spanish government  
Segi = Basque youth organization, banned as terrorist group  
GSPR = French equivalent to the American Secret Service, protecting the French President  
GOES = Grupos Operativos Especiales de Seguridad, Spanish equivalent of SWAT teams 

*

They’d snatched him at two a.m. in Barcelona, on the edge of the Plaça Reial; he’d been drunk, which made getting him into a car that much easier. It’s eight, now, and they’re six hundred kilometres away in Murgia, and d’Artagnan’s been driving all night. He desperately wants a coffee, and a cigarette, but instead he’s five feet underground, standing in the doorway of a fucking desolate little wood-framed _zulo_ with mold growing down the walls and a flashlight dangling from the ceiling, watching Bonacieux make sure the handcuffs are secure and their guest still unconscious, and for the first time since he’d thrown his initial Molotov cocktail at a _kale borroka_ in Bilbao d’Artagnan is shit scared.

His father, he thinks suddenly, and startingly, would kill him for this.

Bonacieux grunts and gets up, distastefully brushing mud from the floor off of his trousers, and creases his face even further as he catches d’Artagnan’s unease. He’s a jumpy, twitchy little man anyway, and after this he’s positively wriggling. “What?”

d’Artagnan shakes his head, rolling a cigarette between his fingers just to give him something to do. “Is he dead?”

“Of course not,” Bonacieux scoffs, though he turns back just to check. The soldier’s cheek is bruised, but other than that he seems merely asleep, slouched in his khaki fatigues and white t-shirt, head hung low.

“And we’re sure he’s Spanish?”

“You heard him and his friends. They were chatting away with that bartender.”

“Sure,” d’Artagnan says, and sticks his fag behind his ear so he can stuff his hands in his pocket. “So what now?”

“You’re staying here to watch him,” Bonacieux says dismissively as he shoulders his way through the door and lifts up the trapdoor to the overgrown garden beyond. “I’ll contact the _cupula_ and see what’s next.”

It’s an hour before anything happens, which d’Artagnan spends most of pacing above ground. When the man finally wakes, it is with a snort and a cough, and quick, hazy looks to either side before he settles on d’Artagnan’s face.

“Ah,” he says slowly. “Not your typical hangover, then.”

He’s speaking in French, and d’Artagnan’s stomach clenches as he turns away and kicks sharply against the corrugated iron that keeps the zulo intact. “ _Fuck!_ ”

When he turns back, still cursing under his breath at both the _monumental_ amount of shit they’re in (and at the throbbing in his toe), the soldier is testing the strength of the handcuffs, twisting his wrists this way and that, either oblivious to d’Artagnan’s presence or, more likely, simply feeling completely unthreatened by him. Which is fair enough, d’Artagnan thinks, as he edges back in and sits gingerly in the doorway.

“ _Pardon_ ,” he says, and the soldier squints at him. “I think we’ve fucked up.”

“You _think_ ,” the man drawls, and, having determined that he is, in fact, immobilized, he settles back into a more comfortable position in the chair, as though he has not a care in the world. “You’re French, then. How old?”

“Twenty,” d’Artagnan says, and bristles. This isn’t supposed to be how this goes, any of it. “You?”

“Classified,” the man smirks, and d’Artagnan’s heart sinks even lower. “Do yourself a favor, kid, and unlock these. We’ll get you a plea bargain and a new identity so they don’t come after you.”

“Can’t,” d’Artagnan says simply, and shrugs when the man’s eyes narrow. “Not unless you want to take someone else with us, too. An’ she’s married, so – ”

It’s all rising up on him, a bit, and he presses the heels of his hands against his eyes, watching sparks burst in his vision, thinking of his dad and Biarritz two summers ago and how he’d _known_ , he’d _known_ at the time that he couldn’t trust that man who had looked him up and down as he’d stood frozen, spray-paint in one hand and switchknife in the other, and told him he could give him a life _worth_ something.

Richelieu and Rochefort had promised so much, and now here he was stuck in a hole in the ground with a kidnapped French soldier and a crush on fucking Bonacieux’s pretty, innocent, frightened wife, and fucking _millennia_ of prison were all he had left to look forward to.

“Hey, kid.” The soldier doesn’t sound soft, but he does sound flatly and unquestioningly supportive, which is something new. “What’s your name?”

“Charles,” he mumbles, forcing his hands away from his eyes. The soldier nods, and crosses one leg over the other, for all the world like he’s having a pleasant conversation in his living room.

“I’m Athos,” he says. “Look, I don’t want you to get hurt. I’ve got friends who will be looking for me, and my rank is such that you _really_ don’t want to do this. You’re in over your head.”

“Have been for a while,” d’Artagnan sulks, feeling petulant. “And you could be bluffing.”

“True,” Athos says. He yawns a little, and then, leaning his head back, closes his eyes. “Up to you, Charles.”

d’Artagnan is above ground a few hours later when Bonacieux and Rochefort drive up to the abandoned farmhouse; heatwaves rise from the car bonnet as the midday July temperature takes its toll. For a few minutes d’Artagnan can’t stop shouting, about how it was all _their_ fucking idea and now they had a fucking _French_ soldier in a zulo and they were going to send the _fucking_ GOES teams any minute and they’d fucking _promised_ his first op would be a simple snatch-and-grab for the extortion money like they always were – and then Constance slips out of the back seat, wide-eyed and clutching a bowl of her homemade marmitako and just like that, d’Artagnan shuts up.

“Are you quite finished?” Rochefort says, and he’s got murder in his eyes as he climbs down into the zulo with Bonacieux tripping along on his heels. d’Artagnan looks at Constance, who is trying her hardest to make it look like she’s not shaking like a leaf.

“They’re coming, aren’t they,” she says, and d’Artagnan’s heart cracks. “This one is too big.”  
  
“He could be lying,” d’Artagnan soothes, though he doesn’t believe a word he’s saying. “He could – he could just be some _gendarme_ from somewhere no-one’s ever heard of, there’s no reason why the French would even need to get involved – ”

She shoves the warm bowl into his hands and takes two steps back; even though it’s blisteringly hot, she’s got a shawl around her shoulders, and she pulls it tighter into her crossed arms. “I want out,” she whispers. “Being an _apoyo_ is hard enough, and I know they’ve killed _quemados_ before but I can’t, d’Artagnan – I need – ”

There’s a grunt, faintly, from behind him, and d’Artagnan clutches the bowl closer to him as Constance covers her face with one hand. “I gotta – ” he mumbles, and at her nod he turns and shuffles towards the hole in the dried pine needles.

“I’m not going to ask again.” d’Artagnan hears Rochefort speaking as he drops back underground and waits for his eyes to adjust to the semi-darkness; when they do, it is to the sight of Athos’s head firmly in the crook of Rochefort’s elbow and a gun pressed to his temple. Bonacieux is being useless, as per usual, wringing his hands in a corner, and d’Artagnan just stands still and tells himself not to gape.

“And I won’t say it again,” Athos says, perfectly calm. “My name is Athos. My rank and regiment are classified. And,” he says, with a slight hiss in his breath as Rochefort’s arm tightens around his throat, “when my boss is finished with you for this, you’ll wish the GAL were still around to find you instead.”

“Clever dick, aren’t you,” Rochefort murmurs, and taps the barrel of the gun idly against Athos’s ear. “Bonacieux,” he says, louder, and finally steps back, leaving Athos drawing in a deep breath, his hair all over his face. “Get the camera.”

d’Artagnan ends up operating the camcorder, telling himself not to jitter or bounce on the balls of his feet in his anxiousness, to think of Constance, still waiting up in the light. Rochefort and Bonacieux wear masks, and Rochefort records himself and their demands into a voice scrambler before playing it back; on the screen clutched in d’Artagnan’s hands, Athos is the only person well-lit, and he stares straight ahead above the black cloth keeping him gagged, ignoring the gun jammed into his jaw entirely.

“You’re making a mistake,” he says, when Rochefort has finished taping and he and Bonacieux are pulling the masks off of their sweaty faces. Rochefort turns, then, more quickly than d’Artagnan would have thought him capable of, and pistol-whips Athos across the face. Bonacieux squawks out something wordless as Athos slumps, insensible; d’Artagnan takes a step forward automatically, but stops, hard, at the look Rochefort gives him.

“Stay,” Rochefort says eventually to d’Artagnan, and he nods dumbly as first Rochefort, then Bonacieux climb back outside. The car drives away moments later, and, with the cooling bowl of Constance’s stew clutched close, he settles down to wait.

The video goes up on YouTube at 3:30. At 3:45, Athos stirs and groans, slowly rolling his head back and forth on his neck to stretch it out.

“Charming friend you’ve got there,” he says, finally, and, turning his head to the side, spits blood from his cracked lip. “What’s he got on you?”

“Nothing,” d’Artagnan mutters. “I fucked up all on my own.”

“I doubt that,” Athos says, sitting up straighter; his expression is bright as he looks at the phone in d’Artagnan’s hand. “How many views have I got?”

d’Artagnan unlocks the phone, flips through his apps, and refreshes. “A little over two hundred.”

“Hm,” Athos muses. When he looks up, d’Artagnan sees that there’s a tight smile on Athos’s face, as though he’s both pleased and apprehensive. “It’ll only need a thousand.”

At 4:23, just after d’Artagnan has finished feeding Athos what’s left of the marmitako (he nods appreciatively as though being hand-fed is the most natural thing in the world, and for a moment, d’Artagnan worries that he might ask for the recipe), there’s a sudden spike as the video jumps from 890 views to over six thousand, and d’Artagnan’s mouth runs dry. At 4:25, his phone rings.

“ _You little snake_ ,” Rochefort says instantly, skipping all pleasantries, when d’Artagnan picks up. “ _If you and Bonacieux aren’t dead by the end of the week I’ll do the honours myself._ ”

He hangs up, and seconds later, there’s a text with a link to another YouTube video which d’Artagnan loads with trembling fingers. A few feet away, Athos tilts his head, and d’Artagnan stumbles up, braces himself against the back of the chair, and holds the phone out for both of them to watch the France 2 feed.

The press conference is taking place on the steps of the Elysée palace – the Elysée, d’Artagnan thinks, the _fucking Elysée_ , and he misses a lot of the first thirty seconds of the video as a result of just thinking about that. When he comes back to himself the tall, rangy woman at the podium is pushing her fingers through her blond-grey hair to keep it still against the wind, and there is ice in her eyes. Behind her, there are two suited agents, a huge man who seems to be scowling against the entire world and a smaller one who has the eyes of a sniper, and is using them in earnest against the crowd of jostling journalists. He recognizes them, suddenly, despite their new clothes – recognizes the broad shoulders and now not-smiling mouths that had accompanied Athos through Barcelona as he and Bonacieux had been scouting for targets.

“This outrage cannot be allowed to stand,” the woman is saying as though she is wrapping up, her voice husky with rage. “The GSPR will be keeping in regular touch with Spanish police and military forces, and we have gendarmes on standby to travel to Spain and provide support if needed. It has been a long time since ETA have dared to carry out terrorist operations that could harm French citizens. They will regret this day.”

She sweeps her paper off of the podium, and the two agents begin to clear her way to leave. “Madame de Treville!” one of the journalists shouts, and next to him, d’Artagnan can _feel_ Athos smirk.  “The kidnappers did not profess any official affiliation to any armed group in the video. How can you be sure this is ETA?”

Treville turns, and the journalist shrinks. “A member of my team – of President Bourbon’s own protection detail – is being held for ransom,” she says. “All our analysis points to the Basque region but frankly, it wouldn’t matter who it was. We’re going to find them.”

The screen goes dark, YouTube pops up some ads and suggestions, and d’Artagnan can’t breathe.

“I did warn you,” Athos says gently.

“Yeah, you did,” d’Artagnan says vaguely.

_Holy fucking shit._

_*_

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Fem!Treville is in tribute to [Sophie Hatt](http://www.liberation.fr/politiques/2013/12/12/la-femme-du-president_966085), who is currently the head of the GSPR and the only woman in charge of a prominent secret service organization anywhere in the world. She’s pretty darn cool. TBC!


	2. Chapter 2

d’Artagnan spends most of the next three days hiding in Bonacieux’s basement. He’s got _Assassin’s Creed_ , _Call of Duty_ , and the latest _Halo_ in a sad little stack next to the television, and plays them for two hours at a time in between checking his phone for the dozens of piled-up news alerts. He’s set it to tell him every time there’s a fresh story coming out of France or Spain; he keeps himself to the two-hour gaps, strictly, because waiting any less than that before the next fresh reminder of just how screwed he is makes him physically ill.

Twice a day – once in the very early morning, and once during the afternoon siesta – he sneaks out, hops onto his mountain bike that’s seen better days while he’s still in Bonacieux’s backyard, and cycles with a cap and sunglasses firmly shielding his eyes up into the hills. It’s only twenty minutes long each way, that ride out of town, but every time he makes it to the deserted farmstead it’s with an intense sensation of constriction in his chest.

Athos’s stubble turns to the beginning of a beard by the end of the second day. He doesn’t look tired, though there’s a wary pinch growing around his eyes; the cracks his joints make when he shifts in the chair snap through the air loud enough to echo.

“How’s it going?” he asks, every time d’Artagnan arrives and swings down into the zulo with a pot of Constance’s cooking under his arm; it is his only greeting, and has come to mean many different things. On the first day, he asks about the operation that is no doubt underway to find him; d’Artagnan could report nothing specific beyond the immediate listing of all ETA affiliates, and indeed only suspected affiliates, on every first-world nation’s terror blacklist. On the second day, when GOES troops have officially been mobilized in the Basque Country, Athos’s mouth spreads into a hard, firm line, as though he’s displeased with the idea of being rescued by the black-clad thugs who had ridden slowly through Murgia that very morning while d’Artagnan peered at them from his ground-level basement window and told his heart to slow.

On the third morning, Athos is still asleep when d’Artagnan and Constance slip down underground. He’d tried to tell her not to, but she’d insisted – and of course, he’d grumbled sarcastically the entire way, it’s totally natural for a young housewife and her young lodger to be seen walking into the woods together with a loaf of bread and a plastic container of stew under her arm. It’s the first time in days, perhaps weeks, that he’s been worried for someone else’s sake rather than his own, and not necessarily because of this Thing that has happened.

“Ah,” Athos says simply, when he wakes and blinks owlishly at Constance; his pupils are dark and over-blown from lack of light, his skin grown waxy. “Worth it, then.”

They have a halting conversation, d’Artagnan translating between Athos’s French and Constance’s timid Spanish. Athos turns out to have a warm smile – something d’Artagnan wouldn’t have expected of him – and his attempts to slowly tell Constance in this foreign tongue that yes, he tried to learn, but with his best friend nearby he’d never had to – show off, he was, and eager to please whenever he was needed. Constance laughs, and then catches herself, and looks at d’Artagnan as though she expects him to do something, to recognize the absurdity of it all and use the key to the handcuffs that he has hidden in the back pocket of his jeans.

He would, he would in a heartbeat, but not if it meant leaving her with them. Athos understands this, it seems, without even having to ask, for when Constance is back above ground and d’Artagnan is apologetically turning off the flashlight, Athos calls out through the dark – “You’re right, if it helps. Don’t leave unless she has a way to follow you.”

That evening, d’Artagnan comes upstairs to watch the news with Constance and Bonacieux, and sees Richelieu on the TV screen, cold and viper-like enough to make him shiver. His protest against the abolishment of his political party is long-winded and biting, for how _dare_ Madrid assume that his perfectly legitimate political activities were mixed up in extortion, and he would _never_ condone violence and never had, and this nation was _supposed_ to be beyond the era of entanglements between militias and the state, a reform of which he had always been a staunch supporter.

Rochefort follows, and in his press conference, insists that he can _assure_ the Congress of Deputies that whatever Representative Richelieu’s habits might have been in his previous life as the wealthiest tycoon in Spain, his business practices had never extended to kidnap and blackmail.

d’Artagnan goes to bed that night nauseous and light-headed, and does not sleep.

The next day, as it is announced that French operatives are already in the air and flying to Barcelona, d’Artagnan decides that it is actually far more relaxing to spend more time near the zulo, even if it means dozing in the intense heat above ground, sheltered in the ruins of the tumble-down farmhouse. Mostly, though, he stays down in the zulo with the opening propped wide, letting down the sunlight, and rolling cigarettes for he and Athos to smoke.

“Who’s coming, then?” he asks, eventually, when Athos has lazily puffed his last and spat the butt into a corner, sleepy and sprawling. He looks like he’s starting to lose weight.

“It depends,” Athos says, not bothering to open his eyes. “If the Spanish are left in charge of the operation, I would expect machine guns and a major hostage situation. That’s if they find me here with you, I mean, or with Rochefort. They’d have to smoke you out.”

d’Artagnan turns away so he can swallow hard without being heard or seen as Athos continues. “If the French are given a major part to play, it’ll be quieter than that. Just two men, I would reckon.”

“Just two?”

“Mm.” Athos’s face creases into a ghost of a smile, and he opens his eyes just a fraction to stare up into the earthen ceiling of the zulo, contemplating darkness. “My friends have more than enough experience with this sort of work. Madame de Treville will secure them all the latitude she can manage.”

“Is she a good boss?”

“The best.”

“Tell me about them,” d’Artagnan says, and by this time he doesn’t know whether he’s asking out of a sense of self-preservation – know thine enemy and all that – or whether he just needs something to talk about, needs something to jolt his mind out of the endless, pointless circle that is trying to figure out how he and Constance can leave together besides the obvious of just pulling her into a car and driving like hell towards the border. (She’d never allow it, is what would happen, and then he’d be alone and she’d be dead, or worse.)

Athos looks at him as though he’s a new recruit, as though he deserves disciplining for the question but he feels like bending the rules. “They’re insane,” he starts, flatly, and then laughs, long and low, and for a moment d’Artagnan wonders whether it’s finally gotten to him, whether the dark and the camera and the world being so close and yet so far away has finally broken him.

But it turns out he hasn’t, because he talks about Algeria and the rings of _banlieues_ in Paris, and late-night patrols and how _fucking_ stupid it is that men you consider to be brothers can be gone in an instant, and how somehow their companionship can break any fall. He’s had a lot of falls, Athos says, but never been hurt so badly that they couldn’t pick him up; here he breaks off, and looks at d’Artagnan hard, like he’s wondering whether any of this is working, and wondering why he even said it.

It is working, though – it’s filling d’Artagnan with those minute little daydreams which multiply and breed all the faster for the worse ground they’re planted in. Lifetimes where he never picked up that spraycan, never took that bus to Bilbao, never thought a man like Rochefort must have been right because of the success he had stolen.

Athos shifts in his chair, squints at the color of the light coming down the shaft. “You should go,” he says gently. “And stay home. If Bonacieux or Rochefort ask you to come with them again, stay put.”

“Why?”

“It’s been nearly a week. Normally what needs to happen has happened by now. And it will, soon.”

It only occurs to d’Artagnan once he’s halfway back to the village that he never caught the actual names of Athos’s two friends. He has no idea, in truth, whether that fact is supposed to comfort or worry him.

The next morning, Saturday, Rochefort comes to the house wearing a wide-brimmed hat and a shirt only a tourist can love – he would be too conspicuous, no doubt, in his customary suits, and if he wants to remain anonymous and unfollowed with the gun he has hidden in his back pocket he needs to stay unnoticed. He gets d’Artagnan groggily out of bed at ten, pulls a shaking Bonacieux out of the kitchen, and orders them both into the car. Athos, d’Artagnan thought bitterly, had been rather vague on the specifics of escaping from being forced out of his home at gunpoint; and besides, with Constance standing pale and white-knuckled at the top of the garden path, he’s hardly in the mood for dangerous heroics.

They get to the zulo within half an hour, and Rochefort himself pulls Athos, blinking and stumbling – not out of weakness, d’Artagnan is sure, but sheer bloody-mindedness – out into the stark sunlight. Fifteen minutes after that, they’re driving further into the foothills with Athos in the trunk, and Rochefort snarling at Bonacieux to open up the backseat and point the gun back there, damn you, because if he kicks out a taillight even a simpleton walking his donkeys past them on the road _is_ going to notice. Athos completely disregards Bonacieux’s shrill warnings, and continues booting and shouting through his gag until they roll to a stop; they’re still in the forest, but now a very long and hot walk from the town and in country that isn’t good for much besides wild pigs and monasteries.

Rochefort has a length of bike-chain in the glovebox; when he tells d’Artagnan and Bonacieux to get Athos out of the boot d’Artagnan fears the worst, but in the end it’s better, if it can be called that – it is not to be torture, nor a bullet in the back of the head, but dehydration in the blistering summer heat that is to be Athos’s fate.

Athos blinks quickly at d’Artagnan twice in succession as Rochefort paces away to take a phone call, probably from an agent of Richelieu’s; d’Artagnan looks quickly at Bonacieux, who is completely done with everything, it seems, and pulls the cloth gag briefly out from between Athos’s teeth.

“Porthos and Aramis,” Athos whispers. “When they find you, tell them everything. They’ll get both of you out.”

“They won’t believe me,” d’Artagnan chokes out.

“If you tell the truth, they will.”

His message delivered, Athos settles back tiredly into the tree, his arms spread wide and hands forced backwards by the handcuffs and chain, and nods, his eyes fixed and firm on Rochefort’s back. d’Artagnan’s fingers shake as they replace the gag.

As they drive back into Murgia, with Rochefort’s silence promising death if this little clean-up is traced back to him and Bonacieux gibbering something about his now-lost chance at a seat on the town council, heat waves rise visibly off of the dusty road.

Thirty-five degrees, and it is not yet noon.

*

_TBC_

*


	3. Chapter 3

*

Rochefort drops d’Artagnan off in the central plaza in Murgia, as if it’s totally normal to drop someone off into a place that looks like an army camp. If he’d been planning to get d’Artagnan lost in the crowd, though, it works; the audacity of it, as Rochefort and Bonacieux drive off right in front of a jeep full of yawning, black-clad commandos, leaves d’Artagnan breathless. One of the soldiers bumps into him on his way across the road, apologizes, and continues on to the café where the troop are apparently picking up some lunch; by the time d’Artagnan gets back to the Bonacieux home his knees are wobbling and his breath is coming in pants.

Shit. Shit. He needs to check the news broadcasts again. Maybe there’s a hotline. Maybe he can steal a phone and leave an anonymous message. _Get a fucking move on, there’s a man dying of thirst in the hills and no I didn’t have anything to do with it no but please please hurry –_

“Fuck,” he says to himself, viciously, and practically kicks in the door to the house on his struggling way through it. It’s dark and cool inside in the pre-siesta hour, and Constance has been cooking. It smells almost too good to be real.

“Constance?” he calls, and then there’s a big, squeezing arm around his neck and he really _can’t_ breathe.

“Well, well,” a soft, deep growl says into his ear, promising a lot of hurt. “What have we here?”

He kicks out, hits nothing, and squeaks as loudly as he can as his back hits the floor. “Ow!” comes a shout from the kitchen, suddenly, and a shriek, and then another, lighter, male voice. “Porthos! She hit me!”

“Good f’her,” the giant growls, as d’Artagnan bats futilely at the Kevlar vest, the massive black-gloved hands around his throat. “Settle, boy,” he snarls, and d’Artagnan decides, as his vision starts to swim, that yes, that would probably be a good idea.

“Porthos,” he rasps, and instantly the giant’s dark face is right up in his, peering menacingly.

“Yeah,” he says slowly. “I’m gonna let go of you now, kid. No sudden moves.”

Constance trips in from the other room as Porthos releases him and d’Artagnan draws in a huge gulp of air. The other soldier – it must be Aramis – follows behind her with a handgun dangling at his side, rubbing ruefully at the beginnings of a black eye.

“Constance,” d’Artagnan says, and she throws herself at him before he can even sit up. He can see Aramis grinning over her shoulder, but there is no mirth in it. Porthos is standing too, now, and the hulk of him in the semi-darkness is terrifying. d’Artagnan thinks he might understand, now, what Athos meant when he said it would only take two.

“Charming,” Aramis says, his smile not getting anywhere close to his eyes. “Such cute little terrorists.”

“Oi,” Porthos rumbles.

“Not her,” d’Artagnan says. He’s shaking now, because this is all happening too fast – he feels like his whole week has existed in some other life. “Please. She didn’t want to marry him.”

“Shut up, d’Artagnan,” Constance says, and she turns to sit down next to him hard, hooking her arms around her knees and looking miserably down at her feet. “Please, just tell them – what will come will come – ”

“Tell us what, exactly?” Aramis’s voice has sunk down to a whisper. There is a rifle on his back, d’Artagnan notices suddenly – he _sounds_ like a sniper, like a shadowy menace who would be totally at home on d’Artagnan’s Xbox.

“I can show you where Athos is,” he finally bursts out, and just like that, both Porthos and Aramis stand two inches taller, and the relief floods through him – telling him that yes, this is the right thing to do, fuck the consequences, he can’t let this happen and he’ll always be able to hold onto this moment as a reminder of redemption. Porthos reaches down, grabs his arm so hard he knows it’ll bruise, and hauls him back out the door into the garden – Aramis is following with Constance, thank God, so they’re not alone, and the quick trip around the corner to the nondescript little car the Frenchmen have brought with them is –

“Wait!” d’Artagnan bursts out, then, a thought striking him like a football to the head during a Saturday kickabout – he tears free of Porthos’s grip, holding out a finger behind him to let them know he’s coming back, and rushes back into the kitchen. Constance is already in the car, with Aramis in the driver’s seat and Porthos glowering from the open passenger door, when d’Artagnan comes careening back with four gallons of store-bought water from the pantry, kept to protect them against drought days and bad pipes.

“Huh,” Aramis says, and Porthos’s expression shifts into something a little more neutral as d’Artagnan throws the water into the back seat, clambers in next to Constance, and points towards the first road they need to take.

d’Artagnan isn’t sure when Aramis starts swearing under his breath, but it doesn’t stop. It doesn’t stop as they wind their way onto the first dirt track; it doesn’t stop as the tires squeak in the dust and Porthos reaches over to flip on the windscreen wipers to sweep away the pollen, the thin miasma of clay; it doesn’t stop as they go over a bump as they get to the treeline and Constance grabs her way into her seatbelt, her other hand clutching at d’Artagnan’s wrist.

And then Athos comes into view, and Aramis’s litany bursts into a shout as he and Porthos burst out of the car and run for him. d’Artagnan finds he can follow only much more slowly, dreading what he might find; he and Constance are clinging to each other now, shaking, wavering in the heat.

“C’mon, c’mon!” Porthos growls back over his shoulder, and Constance breathes in sharply, takes one of the gallons of water from d’Artagnan’s hand, and trips forward. Aramis has used a boltcutter to snap the handcuffs, is spreading out his shirt to provide some shade as his skin immediately starts to bead with sweat; Porthos grabs the water, opens it, pours it over Athos’s head, his neck, his wrists, his paper-white face.

“Don’t you fucking _dare_ ,” Porthos says, and with one heave, he’s got Athos’s soaked, fragile body in his arms and is barreling back towards the car. “Air-con,” he snarls, and d’Artagnan leaps back to turn the dashboard on to the coldest setting, blasting the vents on full, putting down the back seats as flat as he can make them. The little car’s engine shrieks in protest; the bonnet is steaming and sending up heatwaves.

It takes fifteen minutes to wake Athos up. When he does, his eyes are unfocussed, and the car is far too crowded; Porthos doesn’t fit anywhere, but he’s hunched in the back anyway with Athos’s head on his lap, and Aramis is pressed up against the opposite window to keep the sun from falling on any of them, and d’Artagnan, in the passenger seat, wants to faint with relief.

“Hot,” Athos murmurs, and pushes weakly at Porthos’s hands.

“No kidding,” Aramis grins; he leans forward briefly, presses his and Athos’s foreheads together before returning to his role as sunshade. “You fucker.”

“He’s the fucker,” Athos says weakly, flapping a hand towards d’Artagnan; somehow, there is no malice in it. Porthos grabs Athos’s hand, brings it back firmly to his side, and with his other hand grabs some more water to splash onto both of them. Athos’s answering whine is the best thing any of them have heard for a while, it seems; Constance starts to cry, and Porthos’s grin is transformational, turning the Hulk into a giddy, glorious teddy bear.

They all lapse into silence, then, and just breathe. By the time d’Artagnan opens his eyes again, it’s been nearly half an hour, and some color is returning to Athos’s face as he slowly hauls himself into sitting upright, still firmly wedged into Porthos’s shoulder.

“Treville?” he rasps, and Aramis nods quickly, pulling a mobile out of his pocket. Already, d’Artagnan can see the soldier in Athos re-asserting itself, accustomed to giving commands. The dread is starting up in his stomach again, too, as he looks across at Constance and sees how hard she’s biting her lip, how suddenly unready they both are to go home and face their music.

Maybe they should just get out of the car and run. Run until they, too, run out of water, and end up expiring in the hills.

“Oh,” Aramis says, then – he’s peering down at his phone with a most curious look on his face. “Rochefort’s dead.”

That surprises everyone, despite the general lack of caring what the hell happened to Rochefort as long as he’s stopped. “What?” Athos says, frowning, and reaches out clumsily for the Blackberry, still uncoordinated.

“Blew himself up in his car as Madame closed in, it seems,” Aramis says, grabbing Athos’s hand and putting the phone firmly into it. “Drove it into the Palau de la Generalitat de Catalunya. Fancy.”

Athos pauses, looking down carefully at the text. Then he looks at Constance, and she slumps like a marionette left neglected for too long.

“I’m sorry,” Athos says. d’Artagnan reaches over to take Constance’s hand, and just holds on.

It takes nearly three days for Constance to manage to close Bonacieux’s affairs and arrange a funeral; keeping the media away, and the interrogators, is close to impossible. d’Artagnan spends most of that time holed up in the basement of the Bonacieux home, again, waiting for his turn to be taken; but it doesn’t come. Every knock at the door, every snap of a camera shutter as poor Constance hurries in and out, steals more and more of his sleep.

On the fourth morning, there’s a knock at the _basement_ door which nearly makes him fall off the couch where he’s been nesting. It opens to Athos – Athos in a suit and tie and a wire coming out of his ear, Athos clean-shaven and healthy and heavily but discreetly armed, every inch the bodyguard. It’s an impressive sight, made even more welcome by the smile on the Frenchman’s face, and the hand he holds out to d’Artagnan, which, when shaken, is dry and cool.

“Hold on,” Athos says, before d’Artagnan can say anything, and he presses a finger to his earpiece. “Madame,” he murmurs. “All clear.”

Madame Jeanne de Treville, Chef du GSPR, is taller than she looked on the television, and infinitely more intimidating. Some of the height comes from three-inch heeled black boots; the far-reaching stare and the strength of her handshake are all her own.

“Sit,” she says, and d’Artagnan does, though he very much wants to run. Has he finally fallen asleep, and woken up in one of his video games? Treville just looks at him for a while, up and down, from side to side; at the detritus of his teenaged existence down here, the dumbbells and the console and the empty soda cans.

“Hm,” she says eventually, and tilts her head to look at Athos, who is standing with his hands folded neatly behind his back, completely at ease. “You’re sure?”

Athos’s answer is immediate. “Completely, Madame.”

“Very well,” she sighs, and reaches down into the briefcase she has brought with her, slipping a pen out of the breast pocket of her suit. She signs the first page of the thick sheaf, then holds out both papers and pen to d’Artagnan. “Statement on the illegal activities of Senor Richelieu, abjuration of Spanish citizenship, acceptance of French citizenship, new identity papers, recruitment papers into the Gendarmerie. Get signing, Jacques.”

“My name’s not – ” d’Artagnan gibbers without even thinking, and finds himself talking to empty air as Treville sweeps back out the way she came. “ – Jacques,” he finishes weakly.

“It is now,” Athos says. He looks serious, but not unkindly so. “Better get used to it.”

d’Artagnan stares down at the contracts in his lap. There’s something wild trapped in his chest, churning hard, and he doesn’t know whether it’s terror or joy. “What about – ”

“There’s a pack of those for Constance, too,” Athos reassures, coming over to d’Artagnan and crouching down by his side. He still looks tired from up close, but no less real. “Jeanne needs a new secretary. Nothing too public – nothing that will get her photographed or filmed. Richelieu will never know. And even if he finds out, he’s going to be behind bars for a very long time.”

He reaches up and taps at the signature line on the first piece of paper. “As long as you get cracking. You both have a plane to catch in an hour.”

d’Artagnan stares. The thing in his chest howls, and this time it’s definitely with delight. He opens his mouth to speak, but can’t make any sound – luckily, Athos is ahead of him, and picks up on what his look means without needing to ask.

“Everyone needs a chance,” Athos says, simply, quietly. “Second chances, too.”

He gets up and goes back to the door, and waits; d’Artagnan takes a deep breath, picks up the pen, and begins again.

*

**FIN**

*


End file.
